An old acquaintance of mine by the name of  Mike Kemble  has written an in depth book about disasters at sea,  so I thought that it would be fitting to compile a short exposé about it. ( I'm not on a commission here folks! )

The book is titled ' On a Sailors Grave ( No Roses Grow) '

The book is a personal investigation by Mike Kemble into many of the greatest maritime disasters that took place during the Second World War.  Obviously there were many thousands of ships sunk in WWII and it would not be possible to cover each and every one of them or the individual lives lost, so the author has opted to cover a special selection of a famous few of them.

HMS HOOD

Some of these losses are well know such as the sinking of SS Athenia, the loss of HMS Hood and the loss of axis ships from German Kriegsmarine, such as the the mighty battleship Bismarck and the 40,000 ton  battleship Scharnhorst.

SCHARNHORST

There are some incredibly tragic losses covered in the book such as the sinking of the huge German passenger liner MV Wilhelm Gustloff, in which over 9,000 thousand people died.

The British hunter-killer ship HMS Kite that was a Black Swan class sloop, is also somewhat exclusively covered in the book along with the terrible story of Operation Tiger in which 900 US military personnel lost their lives during a rehearsal for D-Day off the coast of Dorset UK.

HMS KITE

The book also contains many first hand accounts from eyewitnesses and survivors of these disasters and situates the reader deep into these accounts of some of our histories most dreadful times.  The reader will be left with a profound insight into the terrible price paid in lives and material during the battle for supremacy of the high seas in WWII.

The book is a 170 x 250 mm soft-back with 213 pages with several photos included and is available from Woodfield Publishing priced at the new reduced credit crunch saving price of £11.00 -  $18.00 ( at time of writing 21st June 2009 )

You may also want to visit... www.mikekemble.com